She, or someone in her house, turns the music down, before she says, “Mr. Page, I think I’ve figured out who you are. Your father used to extend credit to my mother at his drugstore. She said she couldn’t have made it without that.”
Score a point for Page Drugs. All anyone, including myself, remembers is my father’s drinking and schizophrenia. It is easy to forget what a decent guy he was.
“That’s nice to hear.
Did you live out in the county?” I ask, searching for anything to build a connection with this woman. If she eventually can be persuaded to back off her story, I’ll be more than happy to make it easier for her.
“Moro,” she says.
“We rode the bus in. School consolidation was hard on a lot of people, but it was worth it for me. I never would have gotten to take physics or calculus.”
What did she need them for if she ended up a bookkeeper for a meat packing plant? On the other hand, what did I need them for either? If someone could have taken that time to teach me to balance my checkbook, I would have been better off.
“I admired y’all,” I say sincerely.
“It couldn’t have been any fun.” For kids out in the county, it was like being black in the early days of desegregation. They were the ones to have to give up their schools and teachers.
“Lots of kids in town were snobs,” she says.
“That didn’t make it any easier.”
“I got shipped off to Subiaco for high school,” I say, making it clear I wasn’t one of them before maneuvering the conversation around to a date when I can come see her. She tells me tomorrow after work will be a good time for her. As bookkeeper her hours are normally from eight to five.
I look down at the statement she gave the sheriff.
At the time of the murder she was volunteering at her tads’ school, which I assume is the private segregationist academy in Bear Creek. Her alibi has been corroborated by the principal’s secretary and the log kept by the school. Obviously, Willie’s murderer knew her schedule. I get her address and thank her for agreeing to talk with me. I hang up, knowing she doesn’t realize how hard I will have to go after her on cross-examination unless she changes her story.
As soon as I put the phone down, Dan lumbers into my office and sits unnaturally erect in the chair across from me. Still in pain from his skiing debacle, he has a nervous sheep dog look on his face that tells me he is up to something.
The chair creaks under his bulk. I thought now that he is eating his own cooking he would lose some weight. No such luck. He must be up to two hundred fifty, maybe more. I hope Brenda will leave him alone now that she’s kicked him out. They didn’t have kids, and he didn’t have any money.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I guess,” he mutters, “I have a date tonight.”
A date! No wonder he looks so miserable.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” I ask solemnly.
“Women nowadays have all these weird positions they want you to try.
You could really hurt yourself if she gets going.”
“Are you serious?” he asks, alarmed.
“I’m too fat and sore to do anything but stare up at the ceiling. I was hoping we could go to Luby’s in the Mall and then watch a little TV.”
From the top drawer of my desk I take out a paper clip and straighten one end of it but resist the temptation to stick it in my ear.
“No way. As soon as she gets a sexual history, out come the creams, the oil, the leather-you name it.”
Dan slumps in his chair.
“You gotta be shitting me. For God sakes, this girl teaches the third grade and likes bird watching. She can’t be like that.”
I lean back in my chair.
“Teachers are the worst. They love the discipline. She’ll have you in a harness swinging from the ceiling before the night’s over.”
Dan grimaces at the thought.
“As fat as I am, it’d have to be from the bridge,” he says, nodding in the direction of the river, “and that might not even hold me.”
“Seriously, though, you gotta do better than Luby’s on the first date,”
I instruct him. Then grinning I say, “That’s married food. She’ll want some raw meat. Lots of protein. She’s got a long night ahead of her.”
Dan takes off his new bifocals and squints at a spot on the right lens I can see from across my desk. He rubs a tissue over the lenses, smearing them. The glasses now look as if his dog, a mutt he found limping down the street in front of his apartment, has sneezed on them.
“Maybe I should have just shot myself,” he says, his voice morose, “instead of letting Brenda file for divorce.”
I relent. He sounds too serious.
“It won’t be all that bad,” I say.
“Tell me about her. If she’s in her seventies, you’ll probably be pretty safe.”
He gives up on the glasses and massages the back of his neck while he considers his answer.
“She says she’s forty.” He reaches into his wallet and hands me a picture. A brunette, the woman isn’t bad looking at all, and actually looks a lot younger than any forty-year-old I know.
“How’d you meet her?” I ask.
Dan leans forward and reclaims the photograph.
“Well, actually I haven’t yet,” he mumbles.
“This is through one of those computerized dating services.”
“Tell me you’re not serious,” I beg, amazed he would spend what little money he has on a blind date. Yet we both know Dan doesn’t do well with women he finds on his own. Brenda was a ball-buster from hell, and a few months ago the hooker client he was in love with allegedly abused her kid by holding her down in a tub of hot water. As a favor to Dan I represented her in juvenile court and got her off, but whether she did it, I’ll never know.
“She sounds pretty nice on the phone,” Dan says defensively.
“I think we have a lot in common.
She likes to eat, watch movies on TV.
Besides, if this doesn’t work out, they guarantee ten more dates.”
Ten? I grit my teeth to keep from saying something sarcastic.
“How much does all this cost?” I ask, trying not to laugh out loud.
Knowing Dan’s tastes, I wonder if this woman is a blind mud wrestler.
His divorce won’t be final for a while, and here he is trying to get involved with someone else. Yet, how in the hell can I say anything?
I’m more obsessed with women than Dan will ever be. I even called Amy last Sunday to check on Jessie and ended up spending a half hour on the
phone with her.
“Lemme see, a total of almost a thousand bucks,” Dan says, studying his checkbook, which he has tugged from the inside of his suit coat.
“I finally settled the one personal injury case I’ve had for a couple of years. I should be saving the money to pay some taxes, but it’s hard to make myself put any aside.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, more than happy to agree on this subject.
The government can’t come within hundreds of billions of dollars of balancing its budget and yet it has the nerve to demand that people like Dan and I try to pay as we go.
“Does she get a picture of you?” I ask.
Dan chuckles.
“Not a recent one,” he says.
“I didn’t want her to think I was trying to get out of the nursing home for a night on the town. I kind of fudged and said I was divorced, too. If this works out, I hope she doesn’t read the paper much.” He pats his rib and says solemnly, “Anyway, she can’t be into anything too bizarre. She said she can see my dimples in the picture they sent her and that she likes them.”
It’s not love that makes the world go round; it’s lies.
“You’re in big trouble, then,” I kid him, wondering if any of the information they’ve exchanged is true. Dimples? Why not? Women have loved men for far worse reasons. I haven’t seen Dan’s dimples in a while. H
e hasn’t had much to smile about. Maybe this will turn out to be the love of his life. Brenda certainly wasn’t.
“The woman I’m interested in,” Dan says, rubbing his sore ribs, “is the old girlfriend in Bear Creek. Now, there’s a hot mama. Did you do any good with her this weekend?”
I nod, knowing Angela fascinates him almost as much as she does me. One day last week I gave him a line-by-line account. To be such a screw-up himself, Dan is a good listener and fairly shrewd when he’s not talking about himself. Omitting the more graphic details, I bring him up to date.
He comments when I come to a stopping place, “If Angel baby had a happy marriage to that pig farmer, then I’m Judge Crater.”
I have begun to think the same thing. Angela talks about how great Dwight was, but she doesn’t talk about how much fun they had.
“He may have been so sick the last few years that’s all she remembers,” I say, happy to defend her dead husband now that his memory doesn’t seem like such a threat.
Dan leers at me.
“Well, she’s starting to make up for lost time now.”
“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” I say, thinking how odd Saturday was. Angela made up her brother-in-law’s bed, but she didn’t bother to wash the sheets.
“But she looked so damn good I couldn’t have resisted her if I had wanted to.”
“You should get her over here,” Dan advises.
“It sounds like she prefers somebody else’s bed to her own.”
I take out a rubber band from my drawer and pop it against the desk.
“She’s gonna have to do something. For some reason she feels obligated to sell out to his brother, but she doubts if he can pay her. I can’t help but feel bad for her.”
Dan snorts and wags a finger at me.
“Who you ought to feel bad about is Amy. If she put out a contract on you, I wouldn’t come to your funeral.”
Amy, Dan, and I were all friends in night law school. He is rightfully protective of her.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” I say, contritely.
“I called her the other day to see how Jessie is doing. She sounded okay.”
“Don’t you fuck her over anymore!” Dan orders, and pushes himself up out of the chair.
“If you’re through with her, leave her alone! Damn it, she’s crazy about you and this is killing her!
The stupid little fool.”
“I won’t,” I say quickly. Dan’s face is flushed, and he’s actually panting. With a look of disgust on his face, he huffs out of my office and slams the door. I give him five minutes to get over it.
One of Dan’s problems is that he can’t stay mad at anybody any more than he can lose five pounds.
Dan’s right. I shouldn’t have called her. It’s just that this is an unsettling time in my life. Taking this case in Bear Creek probably wasn’t a good idea. There is too much unhappiness over there, and I feel as though I am becoming sucked in by it. Still, things could work out for me and Angela. All she needs is time. My problem is that slowing down is not something I do well. Apparently, neither does Angela.
At four o’clock I get a rare business client, a young man who told me on the phone last week he wanted to come in to see me about a zoning problem. Len Chumley, a kid who can’t be much out of college, follows me back to my office, telling me that he knew Sarah his last year at the University.
“She was just a freshman,” he says respectfully as he sits down across from me, “but you could tell she was going to be special.”
“She’s doing fine.” Special in what way, I wonder, as I try to size up Chumley. This guy looks a little slick, but I have no handle on males his age.
Only a couple years out of college, he probably doesn’t have a lot of money, but he doesn’t mind putting it into the clothes on his back. He has on a black-and-white herringbone sports coat that looks to be silk and a dandy purple handkerchief poking out of the pocket.
“What kind of problem do you have?” I ask, deciding not to inquire about my daughter. He probably wouldn’t tell me the truth anyway.
“I’m primarily in the condom delivery business,” he says, not batting an eye. He whips out a business card and slides it across my desk. I put on my reading glasses. In old English script it gives Chumley’s telephone number and an address that I recognize as only a couple of blocks from an exclusive area of town. In the center it says:
CHUMLEY’S CONDOMS DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR.
Then below it: we come before you do.
“A business for the nineties,” I concede, thinking this kid will probably be a millionaire someday.
Chumley is short, maybe no more than 5‘6”, and already a bit thin on top, but he has the sales man’s way of using what assets he has to his advantage.
“They have a condom store in Fayetteville,” Chumley reminds me, “but for every person who isn’t embarrassed buying their rubbers in front of their neighbors, there are fifty in Arkansas who would prefer to have a conservatively dressed salesperson come to their house and show them a variety of products including condoms, sex toys, and videos.”
Maybe their neighbors will mistake them for Mormons.
“Sex videos, huh?” I ask.
“So it’s not just condoms?”
“Related products. In my marketing course at the University, I was always fascinated by surveys which show how difficult it is for the customer to say what it is he or she would really like to buy.
Even though the interactive video is revolutionizing the art of merchandising, there will always be a place for the Fuller Brush man and the Avon lady.”
I would hardly place French ticklers, dildos, vibrators, and porno movies such as Sore Throat and Full Speed Ahead in the same category as cosmetics, but maybe I’m out of touch. I can picture Sarah’s reaction when my picture shows up on the front page of the Democrat-Gazette defending the First Amendment rights of this little hustler. I ask, “Specifically, what is your problem?”
“They want me to take my “We Come Before You Do’ sign out of my front yard,” he says, his voice registering high with indignation.
“I work out of the house my parents left me.” He hands me a letter from the city warning me that he is in violation of city ordinance #1437. “All I’m doing is advertising a legitimate business.”
“Where do you live?” I ask, wondering who on the floor has a set of municipal ordinances. We have more laws in this country than ants.
It’s hard to believe that we need every single one of them.
“On the corner of Riverview and Dayton,” he says.
“Even though it’s zoned residential, there’s a lot of traffic by there in the day. You’d be surprised how many people see it.”
I don’t doubt that. I suspect that it hadn’t been up fifteen minutes before someone called city hall. This case is a loser, and I tell him so.
“There’re all kinds of eloquent arguments that can be made on behalf of free speech and the free enterprise system, but I suspect it would be so much pissing in the wind. You could wind up spending a fortune trying to get a variance and falling flat on your face.”
The kid gives me a sly smile.
“I was thinking maybe you’d barter your fees.”
I groan inwardly, thinking this is what my law practice has come to.
“Follow me,” I say, standing up and heading for the door. Dan, I think,
have I got a client for you!
At home Tuesday night Angela calls to tell me that she has been invited to Atlanta to spend a week with an old college roommate. She is driving down Thursday morning. I wonder if she is trying to avoid me, but she sounds friendly enough. I want to talk about Saturday, but I manage to restrain myself. The quickest way to make her back off is to crowd her, especially when she has asked me not to do so. I tell her what is going on in the case and that I will be back in Bear Creek Thursday. She is keenly interested in the details and reads to me an article in the Bear Creek T
imes about the case. For the only source of news in Bear Creek, it is amazingly succinct and reports only the barest outline of the case. My recollection of the news media in Bear Creek is that its primary business was advertising revenue, and distinctly not investigative journalism or crusades of any kind. Since most of the stores that must advertise in the Times are probably in some way associated with Paul, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Angela at eighteen would have been indignant at this article and charged a conspiracy between the media and the business community, but today she says that she is grateful no one is trying to exploit the already tense race relations in town. If Angela has changed, so have I. If anyone had told me I would make love to Angela in her brother-in-law’s bed thirty years after I left Bear Creek, I would have doubted his sanity. She promises to call me when she returns and hangs up. I go to bed and dream that we are making love in her house in Bear Creek. Someone was watching, but when I wake up, I can’t remember who it was.
Darla Tate’s house is the first one on the right on Kentucky Avenue, less than a mile from Jefferson Academy, where she sends her sons. It is
in a development that was relatively new when I was growing up, but like everything else here, it seems much smaller. The homes are modest A-frames with tiny yards. Darla’s house has siding, however, and is distinguished by a large pecan tree in front. Driving over, I have realized this woman can be a gold mine of information if I don’t make her defensive. Outside of his family, probably nobody spent more time with Willie. What I’m afraid I’ll find out, though, is that Willie, being Chinese, rarely confided in anyone except his wife.
Darlatate comes to the door in a pair of baggy brown slacks. Now that I get a good look at her, I realize she is almost as tall as I am. Her oval face is partially obscured by long, straight hair of a hue that seems to have gone through several changes and is now the color of winter wheat. As I follow into her living room, she offers me a beer, which I regretfully decline. I don’t want this to turn into a party.
“My boys are still at basketball practice,” she says.
“They both play, but they can’t jump more than two inches between them.”
I laugh, remembering that I would have liked to have played basketball at Subiaco, but I, too, had a vertical leap of an inch. What furniture she has is old, and a little worn. A couch, coffee table, TV and VCR, and recliner more than fill the room. Pictures of her boys in their football uniforms are on the walls. I sit on the couch while she plops down in the recliner and picks up a can of Bud Light by her feet.
Blind Judgement g-5 Page 16